


Kaleidoscope

by helsinkibaby



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Het, Rare Pair, Romance, Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 10:44:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5866357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don't remember what she was wearing the first time you met her, but over the years, you find you can't take your eyes off her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kaleidoscope

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: The State Dinner, In the Shadow of Two Gunmen, On the Day Before, Hartsfield’s Landing, 20 Hours in America, Commencement, 25, Disaster Relief, Abu El Banat, Full Disclosure, Eppur Si Muove.

You can’t remember what she was wearing when you saw her for the first time. You’re sure that it was one of the suits that she always wears, professional clothes that announce to the world at large that she’s in control, that she’s not a woman to be messed with. Some women can pull that look off, in fact a lot of the women that you see around the White House can pull it off, but not everyone can pull it off like CJ can, can combine the professional image with that warmth, that smile, to make a winning combination. Cameras flash every time she steps onto the podium, she’s one of the most public faces of the administration, but you’ve never seen a bad photograph of her, don’t know that such a thing exists. She can spin the press any which way she pleases, has them eating out of the palm of her hand. 

You’re man enough to admit that it’s not just the press. 

*

She’s wearing grey the first time you realise what a knockout she is; the first State Dinner of your time in the White House. You don’t exactly have time to stop and smell the roses; not only do you have to staff the President, who, what with the dinner, a siege and a hurricane, has plenty on his mind, but you’re also worried about your grandparents, living somewhere on the Georgia coast, right in the path of the hurricane. You have a million things on your mind, but you still stop dead in your tracks when you see her, hardly able to reconcile the consummate professional you see every day with the goddess before you. 

She doesn’t notice the way you look at her though. 

Or that every man in the room is looking at her the same way. 

*

On one of the worst nights of your life, her shirt is blue. You remember it, though you remember little else about the night, save fear and explosions and screams, adrenaline bitter on your tongue. You remember sitting in that hospital, in that quiet, scared room, waiting for news of your boss, your girlfriend’s father, waiting for news of Josh, the man who hired you, and you tried not to remember being in a room very like that almost a year previous, waiting for news of your mother. 

You try not to equate the two, try not to think that it was going to turn out the same way. 

You fail. 

And later, you try not to feel crushingly guilty, because all of this was your fault. They were shooting at the President because of you, because you’re in love with Zoey. 

The President was shot, because of you. 

Josh nearly died, because of you. 

And your mom died because of you, because you asked her to change shifts. 

You shuttle between the hospital and the White House, and you try not to let these people that you admire so much see that you’re pretty damn close to falling apart. You’re losing the fight though, can feel it, until, that is, you catch one of her wee-small-hours-of-the-morning press briefings. 

She’s shaky; the camera picks that up, despite her attempts to hide it. But she isn’t as shaky as others might have been, doesn’t look nearly as shaky as you feel, and she has the press corps eating out of the palm of her hand, just like always. 

You admire the hell out of her for that. 

And you know right then and there that if she’s being strong, then you can be strong too. 

*

On a night when so many people are concerned about you, trying to get you to talk about immunity, trying to get you to take the deal you’ve been offered, she wears red. The dress is off the shoulder and knee-length, on the sexy side of demure, showing off her smooth skin and her amazing legs to their best advantage. It’s damn hard to even think about immunity when she’s looking like that, but you do your best, blocking her questions, you think, quite well. You even manage to tease her a little when she says that she’s going to change her clothes. Your “I’ll watch” – and it’s a toss-up between that and “Why would you want to?”- is greeted by a drop-dead stare, the like of which you’ve seen levelled at Josh and Toby and Sam on more than one occasion, and you turns swiftly, with a whispered “No.”

But you’re smiling when you do it, because you can see the amusement lurking underneath the surface of the glare. 

She’s not the first to try to talk to you about this, nor is she the last by a long shot, but you dodge them all, all but Leo. “I'll stay with my team,” you tell him. “People should stop trying to get me not to do that.”

You’ll stay with your team. 

And when you see her, changed out of her evening gown and into her regular work clothes, smacking down a reporter that crossed her, doing so in style, you remember exactly why. 

*

She is wearing brown the night you make her desk collapse, although not in the way you’d like to make her desk collapse. It comes during a game of one-upmanship, of cat and mouse, that starts when you refuse to let her borrow the President’s private schedule. She takes it, hides it on you later, which leads to you crazy-gluing her phone, switching your ID cards and finally, masterfully, taking just enough screws out of her desk that it collapses the moment she places something on it. 

You don’t plan on Leo getting involved, and you’re not sure how he got wind of it, but he reads you both the riot act, mercifully cut off by Carol summoning him. You don’t back down though, not even in front of Leo, getting in a dig about how CJ’s more mature than you are, and you’re actually pretty happy that he’s left when the desk collapses. 

CJ looks at you, looking as nonplussed as ever you’ve seen her, tries to be cool and calm with the question, “So, how long do you usually make people your bitch?” 

You eye her up and down, answering in one word. “Depends.” With that, you walk out of the office, and you don’t smile until you’re back at your own desk where no-one will see you. 

*

The summer before the re-election, you see her through another’s eyes, the eyes of your sister, who’s interning in the White House press office. CJ knows who Deanna is, of course she does, but no-one else does. Deanna wanted to be anonymous, didn’t want to spend the summer being “Charlie Young’s sister,” and you respect that. So you arrive separately, leave separately, show no signs of knowing one another on the rare occasions your paths cross. 

Instead, when you get home at night, no matter how tired you are, no matter how early you have to get up the next day, you sit down on the couch beside her, mugs of hot chocolate in hand, and you listen to her talk about her day. Her eyes shine, her hands wave to illustrate her points, and half the time, you’re worried that her hot chocolate is going to spill all over, but you don’t stop to point that out to her because you’re enjoying her enjoyment. For the first time, you think she’s figuring out why you love the job you do, why it means so much to you. She’s getting to see the job from the inside now, can see how it gets under your skin, how it’s enough to kill you with a smile on your face. 

She sees Josh and Toby and Sam in the hallways, all of whom pretend not to know her, and she laughs over the stories that get told about them. She tells you those stories too, making you laugh, even though you’ve heard some of them before, even though you were there for some of them and the tales seem to have grown rather in the telling. But the one who earns most of her respect is CJ. Words like classy and elegant and wonderful pepper the conversations and you can’t help but agree. 

Any more than you can help noticing the look that Deanna gives you, the question in her eyes, the knowing tilt of her smile. 

You notice, but you pretend not to. 

Deanna does too. 

*

On a night when all talk is of American heroes, she wears white, something long and slinky and sparkling that takes your breath away every time you look at her. She stands beside you when the President gives his speech, one of the finest speeches you’ve ever seen him give, a speech about men who ran back into a burning building, a speech about how this is a time for American heroes.

You don’t tell her that you’re standing beside a real live American hero, a woman who goes into a burning building over and over again; a woman who stands on the front-lines and defends what they do, even when she doesn’t agree with it, even when she’s been going toe to toe with Toby and Sam and Josh three seconds before she steps into the briefing room. 

A woman who can handle herself, needs no-one to fight her battles for her, a woman who your sister hero-worships, telling you that when she grows up, she wants to be just like CJ Cregg. 

You know she doesn’t need you to fight her battles for her, but that’s the night that you hear a punk-ass kid call her a bitch, and you’re not going to stand for that. Not that lady, not in that place. You slam him up against the wall and you slap him down, but only verbally. It’s a close-run thing though.

You take care of business and you walk out and you don’t look back. You don’t want to see the kid’s face, and for once, you don’t want to see CJ’s. You’re not so sure how she’d feel about you stepping in like that, or indeed about seeing that side of you. It’s a side you keep well hidden, and given the choice, you wouldn’t have had it slipping out then. 

But the next time you see her, she’s standing at your office door and she’s smiling at you. She’s still in that amazing dress that makes your heart skip a beat, and the beading on the top sparkles, sparkles like her eyes, like the smile she bestows on you. You’re speechless, both from the way she looks and the picture in your hand, the cold of the glass and the smooth wood of the frame your only tethers to reality. Then she speaks, tells you that Deanna gave her the picture, that she’s had it for a week to get it framed, and the thought of her having that picture, seeing something so intensely personal as a six-year-old smiling you being held by your mother, enables you to utter some banality about how nice it is. 

Nice is an understatement, but it’s all you can come up with. 

She smiles and turns, tells you to have a good night, and you let her go, continuing to stare at the picture, at the smiling faces there, remembering another American hero, wishing she could see you now. 

*

On another of the worst nights of your life, she finds you in the Sculpture Garden in the wee small hours of the morning. You don’t even realise she’s there at first, lost in your thoughts. You’re a smart guy, but you can’t understand some of the things that are going on in your world. For the last few months, all you’ve wanted is Zoey back, and tonight, you sat in the Arboretum and she kissed you, just like she had a thousand times in your fantasies. She tasted like champagne and Zoey, but she didn’t taste like yesterday, and for one insane moment, you were ready to push her down on the grass, kiss her breathless, do more than kiss her breathless, Secret Service be damned. 

You didn’t though. You sent her to the club. You sent her to the club and Jean-Paul, and possibly to her death. 

It’s your fault, just like your mom, like the President and Josh getting shot. 

You’re wrapped up in guilt, staring at nothing in particular when she sits down beside you, exhales heavily. “You’re wrong, you know,” is all she says, and you look at her sharply, eyes narrowed. 

“About what?” Some part of you is surprised at the belligerence in your voice; after all, you’re not angry at her. You’re angry at Jean-Paul, furious at yourself, but CJ’s done nothing wrong. 

“This isn’t your fault Charlie,” she tells you. “There was nothing you could have done differently.”

Her voice is completely calm, her eyes holding your gaze, and you want to fight with her. You want to rail at her, at God and fate and whoever the hell took Zoey, but you don’t. Her words, cliché as they may be, actually have the desired effect, making his anger deflate. 

Of course, maybe it’s not the words. Maybe it’s her. 

You take in a deep breath, looking up at the stars shining in the night sky, and like the child you once were, you make a wish, a wish that Zoey is alive somewhere, that she’ll be returned to you. You lost her once, you don’t want to do it again. 

In the silence, a warm hand closes over yours, and against all odds, you feel the edges of your lips turn up in a smile. You wonder how she knows that that’s exactly what you needed, but when you turn your head, meeting her eyes, you know that she needs it just as much as you do. 

“I saw you on the podium,” you tell her, trying to reassure her like she did for you. “You’re kicking ass in there.”

She chuckles, a little ruefully you think. “I’m barely holding them at bay,” she says. Then, quieter, “I’m barely holding myself together.”

You squeeze her hand, knowing well how hard it was for her to admit that to you. “It’s going to be ok,” you say, the words ringing hollow even to your own ears, and from the faint smile on her lips, you know she doesn’t believe it any more than you do. 

“Yeah,” she says, in what’s an obvious lie. “I know that.”

You look away from her then, look back up at the stars. “You think our luck is ever going to get better?” you ask after a while, and at that, she laughs, a real, live, honest-to-goodness CJ Cregg laugh, the kind that warms you from the inside out, makes you really believe that everything is going to be fine. 

You’re looking at her, looking at the smile on her face, and you can’t get over how beautiful she is, and how she’s sitting beside you right now, holding your hand, as if the two of you are orphans of some storm, lost in your own little world. 

And when she reaches out with her free hand, touches your cheek, that beautiful smile still on her face, you realise that that’s exactly what you are. “You’re something else Charlie,” she says, and you want to say something, but all your fancy words have deserted you, along, it seems, with all the moisture in your mouth. 

You would be embarrassed, because this is CJ, your friend, but then you see her face change ever so slightly, see her eyes burn with something that you’ve never seen there before, and that’s enough to have you leaning towards her, just slightly. It’s enough though, because she’s leaning forwards too, and your lips touch, gently at first, then with increasing pressure as the kiss deepens. Her tongue sweeps along your upper lip, and you open your mouth to her, bringing your free hand up to tangle in her hair, pressing yourself closer to her, losing yourself in this moment. 

Then sanity returns to you both at the same time, and you pull away, staring at one another. The expression of surprise on her face matches your feelings exactly, and you really wish that she wouldn’t bite her lip when she’s looking at you like this, because all you really want to do is reach out, free her bottom lip and kiss it again. 

She looks confused, but she doesn’t look angry, or upset, and she doesn’t sound displeased, when she stands, laying her hand on your shoulder. “I should get back inside.” Her hand lingers on your shoulder, squeezing gently, before she slides it off, prolonging the touch as long as she can. 

Her footsteps echo on the path as she leaves, and you turn around, watching her go. 

*

She is in grey in Maizeville, Oklahoma, but that’s not unusual; the whole town is covered in grey. The tornado did a great job of levelling the place; concrete torn up everywhere, spreading a coat of fine grey dust over everything, and it’s lingering in the air, so that even when you walk from one place to the other, you end up covered in grey. 

She’s walking right alongside you, is getting covered in the same fine dust you are, and her suit is grey to begin with, but that’s not where the main body of grey is with her, and if that sounds odd, then you don’t care. Because you know CJ Cregg, know the strong resilient woman that she is, not the wraith that’s currently inhabiting her body. CJ is born to shimmer, to radiate, but she hasn’t been doing that lately, not since the summer. And you knows what people are thinking; that everyone was knocked on their heels over the summer, but you know, like you know your own name, that it’s more than that with CJ. 

Which is why, in the middle of the night in a Red Cross centre in Maizeville, Oklahoma, when you see her going outside, you follow her. Everyone else is sleeping, and you should be too, but you’re actually too tired to sleep, and you don’t know what her problem is. One thing’s for sure though, you’re going to try your hardest to find out. 

She vanishes around the side of the building, and you follow her, hoping you’re not going to end up frightening her, but you can’t keep back your surprise when you see her standing there, a cigarette in those long, elegant fingers of hers. 

“You’re a smoker now?” you ask, and she starts slightly, looking across at you, recovering her composure quickly enough to arch an eyebrow. 

“You’re a stalker now?” All at once, shadows fall across her eyes, and you know what she’s thinking, so you jump in quickly, trying to change the subject, keep the memories at bay. 

“Don’t go trying to change the subject,” you say, keeping your voice deliberately light. “Since when do you smoke?”

She smiles, and you can see the gratitude there. Holding up the cigarette, you’re surprised to see that it’s not lit, and she says, “I quit a long time ago actually… a very long time ago.”

“And you’re taking it up now…” 

You lets your voice trail off, comes closer to her, and she tilts her head back, letting it rest against the wall as she stares up at the inky black sky spattered with silver stars. “I’m not,” she tells you. “Believe it or not, I find just holding it helps. Soothes me.”

You can’t keep the scepticism out of your voice. “An unlit cigarette does all that?”

There’s a moment of silence, then she rolls her head towards you, locks her eyes onto yours, and you couldn’t look away if you wanted to. Not that you want to. “Among other things,” she says, her voice low and throaty, sending shivers up your spine. Or maybe it’s the look in her eyes that does that, need and desire burning in the night, and you’re suddenly very aware of how close you’re standing to her.

“CJ-” you begin, swallowing hard, and she shakes her head, reaching out to grab your tie, pulling you closer to her. 

“Don’t,” is all she says before she brings her lips to yours, and the cigarette falls to the ground as she wraps her other arm around your neck. The kiss is open-mouthed and fierce, almost desperate, as if she’s drowning, using you to help keep her afloat, and maybe you’re kissing her back just the same way. Your arms slide around her waist, the material of her blouse smooth against your palms, and when you feel her shiver, you wonder what the hell she was doing out here without a jacket. 

That’s when her hands work their way under yours, fingernails scraping over layers of fabric, sending shudders down your spine. Your hands move to her hips, and you shift slightly, feeling her gasp into your mouth as her back impacts with the wall behind her. The gasp turns into a moan when you use her surprise to insinuate one of your legs between hers, pushing your thigh up against her, and she grinds against you, a move that makes you moan as well. 

You break the kiss, your lips travelling down her neck, and that enables you to hear her breathing, laboured and shallow, and you hear as well as feel her say your name. It might just be the sexiest thing you’ve ever heard, and hearing it again quickly becomes very important to you. Your hands are busy pulling her shirt from her pants, working underneath the smooth material to trace patterns on the equally smooth skin of her back, so busy that you don’t notice her hands aren’t idle either until you feel them working at your belt buckle. You’d help, but she’s doing fine on her own, and besides, the way goosebumps form on her skin when you trail your fingers across them is pretty distracting. 

But not as distracting as the sensations that shoot through your body when her hands finish their work sliding down your zipper, sliding inside, searching and finding their quarry. You groan against her neck, because she’s holding you and caressing you and damn, she’s good at this, and her laugh is low and throaty, because she knows exactly what she’s doing to you and she’s enjoying it. 

As if from someplace far away, you feel her turn her head, feel her lips brush across your forehead, and the touch is enough to bring you halfway back to reality. You look at her then, meet her eyes, and the look there, naked desire, plain and simple, brings you the rest of the way back. Before you’re consciously aware of it, your hands are moving from her back to the clasp of her trousers, undoing it easily, one hand tracing the path from her navel downwards, not stopping until you find wet warmth. Her eyes flutter shut, her head falling back against the wall, her hands falling to her sides. Your name is a moan from her lips, and you take back your earlier thought. 

That’s the sexiest thing you’ve ever heard. 

It’s enough to drive any semblance of thought or reason out of your head, and you take your hand away, using it to brace yourself against the wall. She moans at the loss of contact, but your other hand is on her hip, and in one swift thrust, you’re inside her, and her moan turns into a gasp, her eyes flying open, locking with yours. You pull back slowly, almost all the way out, then back in slowly, but her hips slam down to meet you, and you know this isn’t going to be slow and measured and frankly, you don’t give a damn. You meet her thrust for thrust, hand sliding up from her hip to her breast, and one of her arms winds around your neck, the other slides up your back, under your shirt, fingernails scoring your skin. Before too long, her breathing is rapid, and you know she’s close from the words she’s muttering, harder and faster and God please, and you reach down to the place where your bodies are joined, touching her there. She gasps, says words that you didn’t know a nice lady like CJ Cregg knew, then she explodes around you, tremors travelling the length of her body. You press your lips over hers, swallowing her exclamations, or maybe letting her swallow yours as you follow her lead. 

When you come back down to earth, both breathing heavily, her eyes are closed. You reach out, touching her face with the back of your hand, and she leans into your touch. Leaning forward, you kiss her, and unlike what you’re just done, it’s slow and languid, tender. When you pull away, there’s a soft smile on her lips, one that threatens to falter when she opens her eyes, sees you looking at her. 

“Charlie…” she breathes, and you shake your head. 

“Don’t,” is all you say, and you’re very aware that the roles have been reversed from when you first came out here. You pull away from her, pull yourself together literally and metaphorically, and when you’re sure you don’t look as if you’ve been doing what you’ve just been doing, you look at her. She’s pulled her clothes together, is fussing with her hair, and you reach out, smoothing it down. 

“Thanks,” she says, and when you smile, her cheeks flush. “I mean… I didn’t mean…”

You stop her words with a kiss. “I know what you mean,” you tell her. “I’ll see you inside.”

When you reach the corner of the building, you turn, see her still standing there, back against the wall, staring after you with one finger running across her lips. 

*

It’s only later, when you’re on Air Force One, that it hits you that that wasn’t the wisest thing you’ve ever done in your life. Not just for the obvious reasons either, though they are legion. You’re very aware, however, that due to the non-verbal aspects of your encounter, neither of you used protection. The thought never even entered your mind until now, but now that it has, it won’t leave. 

So you wait until she comes out of the President’s cabin, meeting her eyes, and you swallow hard when you notice how shaken she looks, how she’s far from the in-control professional you’ve had a thing for for so long. But once she sees you, once her hand goes to the bridge of her nose, rubs there, you know that you can’t back out. 

“Can we talk?” you say simply, and she nods, falling into step beside you. You don’t speak until you’re inside a conference room, and even then, you don’t enter the room very far. Well, you do; she stands at the door with her hand on the doorknob. She’s giving every indication that it’s the only thing that’s holding her up, and your palm itches with the desire to take her in your arms, even to reach out, take hold of her elbow. It itches even more with the memory of how her skin felt, how that very suit felt.

Lost in memory, her voice jolts you back, more so for the tone than for the words. “Last night…” she begins, and you nod. 

“Can’t ever happen again.”

“And shouldn’t have happened then,” she says. You know she’s right but it stings anyway, and though you try not to let that show on your face, it must, because she looks down, away from you. “I didn’t mean that how it sounded.”

“CJ, I’m not sorry it happened.” The words, out before you can stop them, make her head snap up, her eyes finding yours, but you don’t take them back. “I know we shouldn’t have, and I know we can’t again, but I’m not sorry.”

A ghost of a smile flickers across her face, and her hand reaches up to caress your cheek. It feels strange to be so close to her, to share so intimate a gesture, which is surely odd, considering you were a hell of a lot more intimate than that last night. “I don’t think I am either,” she murmurs, and your heart leaps at the words. 

But you’re here for a reason, so you do what you came here to do. “Look,” you say. “I don’t know if I should… but it’s just…”

You break off, unsure of how to continue, and she smiles, that little CJ smile that has grown men eating out of her hand. “Charlie?” Her voice is amused, teasing, and it restores somewhat your equilibrium. 

“Protection,” you say. “We didn’t use any.”

Her face falls, her hand follows suit. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” she says, and her voice is cold, her manner cold. She’s a different CJ all of a sudden, and when she begins turning the handle, your hand closes on her wrist. 

“CJ?” 

She looks at you, and the emptiness in her eyes chills you to the bone. “I can’t have children,” she tells you, and then she is gone. 

*

You can count on the fingers of one hand the conversations you have between then and Christmas, and you wouldn’t have believed it possible to miss someone when they’re working in the same building as you. But things have changed between the two of you, and you don’t know how you’re going to get them back the way they were, don’t even know that it’s possible. 

If you could go back in time, you’d change things, but you know you spoke true in that conference lounge; you wouldn’t take back Maizeville. You’d take back the conference room though, in a heartbeat, because those are the words that scored this schism between the two of you, the confession she didn’t want to make, the pain she didn’t want to reveal to the world. 

So you keep things professional and the most personal moment you share is when you give her a CD to take to Zoey in Manchester. You don’t let other people see that anything is wrong; after all, you’ve got a well-schooled poker face, and if people see that something is wrong, they just assume that you’re worried about Zoey. You leave them their assumptions, because it suits you fine, but Zoey’s no longer the face in your dreams, not lately. 

You make it through the government shutdown and the Christmas tree lighting and President Lassiter’s funeral, shepherding a drunken Toby through a plane flight filled with Republicans. You do all that barely encountering CJ, but she’s always in your thoughts. Even on New Year’s Eve, at Angela Blake’s party, when you find yourself dancing with a beautiful, intelligent woman, you find yourself comparing her to CJ. You find yourself doing the same thing later on when you take her home, and you wonder how long it’s going to be before you stop measuring every woman against CJ Cregg. 

*

One night, you’re at home, practically falling asleep on your couch, when there is a knock on the door. It startles you, because you’re not used to visitors so late, and you stumble to the door, bleary-eyed because it’s been a long day, and the next one’s not that far away. You check, as always, the peephole, because you don’t live in the greatest part of town, and adrenaline, or possibly shock, wakes you all the way up, because the last person you ever expected to see at your door at this time of the night is CJ Cregg. 

When you open the door, you expect bad news, are sure that something so awful has happened that she came here to tell you in person. You’re expecting to hear news about Zoey or the President, or maybe even Deanna. 

You don’t expect her to look at you, her eyes so dull, so defeated, and repeat words you never thought you’d hear in the first place, much less for a second time. 

“I can’t have children.”

You’re so shocked that you automatically step back to let her in. “Yeah,” you say as she walks past, shucking off her coat as if she’s right at home, dropping it onto an armchair before sitting down heavily on the couch. “You told me that.”

“I know,” she says heavily, and you look at her, wondering if you’ve ever seen her like this. She’s perched on the edge of the couch, back ramrod straight, elbows on her knees, chin resting on her balled up fists. Tension radiates from her, and you’re sure that if you applied the slightest bit of pressure, she would snap, like a string pulled too tightly. “I don’t know why I told you that. I don’t usually tell people that.”

You move carefully towards the couch, sitting down beside her just as carefully. You leave a good distance between you though, because you know instinctively that she needs that. “I think you had a pretty good reason,” is all you say, and the slightest hint of a smile appears around her lips. 

“I don’t usually do that either,” she tells you, and you tilt your head, not quite sure what she means. “Have one night stands,” she says, and you have to clench your fist hard so that your face doesn’t show how much that characterisation stings. “Only twice.”

“Twice.” 

She takes your confusion as question, looks at your with a face so pained that you wish you could look away. “Ten years ago,” she says, her voice a whisper. “One night that I’ve spent ten years wishing I could get back. Wishing I could forget.”

She trails off then, and you want to give her some time, but after a couple of minutes of silence, it seems like a gentle prompt is in order. “You want to talk about it?”

“Toby asked me that,” she tells you, and you think that you should be surprised about that, but you’re not. You know that Toby and CJ have a strong bond, that they tell one another things, and there are times when the other man looks at you that you’re sure he knows. There are other times when you’re sure he doesn’t have a clue. “But I couldn’t talk to him… and I talked to Ben, tried to forget about things…” That does surprise you, because who the hell is Ben? “But that didn’t work either. And I didn’t know where else to go, and then I ended up here…” She looks around, her gaze falling on the clock on the mantel. “And I didn’t realise how late it is… I should go…”

She tries to stand, but your hand flies out, catches her around the wrist. “Stay,” you say, and if that sounds pleading, you don’t care. You just know you can’t let her go like this. 

For a second, you’re sure she’s going to leave, but she just sighs, sits back down. Her left hand runs through her hair, and your left hand is still closed around her right wrist, but she doesn’t ask you to remove it, and you don’t want to. 

“It was one of those things,” she says eventually, and you’re not sure if she’s talking about you or the other guy, so you just let her talk. “I was there, and we were talking, and he was so smooth, so charming… and I knew. I knew he was attracted to me… and I knew that he was married and I knew that it was wrong… but I felt it too. I wanted him so badly that night… I could have said no. There were a hundred points I could have walked away. But I didn’t.” 

“We were careful. More careful than you and I were anyway.” No hint of a smile, and you think that she’s forgotten you’re there until she says that. “But sometimes, it doesn’t matter how careful you are… because I got pregnant.” That is a surprise, and your hand slides down from her wrist, palm warm against the back of hers, which is freezing. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, so I went to him, told him… and he offered to pay for an abortion. Made it very clear that he had too much to lose for anything else…” Her lips twist in unmistakeable bitterness. “He went so far as to intimate that it might not be his. I left so pissed off, so angry… I never wanted to see him again.”

For some reason, a shudder runs the length of her body, and you frown. “What happened, CJ?” Because you know the story is far from over. 

Her head turns slowly, her eyes meet yours, pools of searing pain. “Do you know what an ectopic pregnancy is?” She draws each word out, slowly, carefully, and you nod, not saying a thing. “That’s what happened. And there were… complications.” Again with the drawing out of each word. “So I can’t have children.”

You shake your head. “CJ, I’m sorry.”

“That’s what Toby said. He’s the one who took me home from the hospital… and it’s what he said to me again last year… after he told us that Andi was pregnant. He apologised for not telling me on my own… in case it was difficult for me.” She shakes her head, gives a kind of amused little chuckle. “There are times…” Her voice chokes then, and she looks down, away from you, but not before you see the tears in her eyes. 

It’s a long time before she speaks again, a long time when you just sit in silence, looking at her struggle to compose herself, your hand still on top of hers. 

“I’ve spent the last ten years trying to forget about that night… forget about him… and I was so close to being able to do it Charlie… I was so close…”

“What’s changed?” The question is out before you can stop it, and her head whips around to you, eyes wide in alarm, and you find yourself cataloguing the events of the last few days, wondering what could have set her off like this. 

Then it comes to you, and you feel every bit of moisture in your mouth evaporate. 

Because you see CJ being ambushed by Taylor Reid. You hear her voice, a tone of almost desperation, when she insists on a point by point refutation of the charges levelled by Hoynes. You see the way she looked in the office, an inch away from becoming unspooled, and you hear comments from others, wondering what has CJ so rattled. 

And you see her the way she is right now, sitting on your couch, eyes panicked because she knows you know. 

Your jaw drops. “Hoynes?”

Her head drops. “Charlie…”

“Seriously, Hoynes did that to you?”

“It’s not like I didn’t know-”

“But he said those things to you?” You feel a surge of rage rising from somewhere deep in the pit of your stomach and you’d like nothing more than for Hoynes to appear in front of you. “Bastard.”

A humourless chuckle brings you back to reality. “Yeah. That’s what Toby said too.”

“You went to see him. About the book.” She nods once. “Are you-?”

“I don’t know.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s called Full Disclosure. And he did tell me that I don’t have to be afraid…” She sighs, and the next is said so quietly that you almost miss it. “But I am.”

You don’t know what to say to that, so you try lifting her hand, wrapping both of yours around it. It seems to work, because some of the dullness seems to have left her eyes when she next looks at you. “I don’t think this administration can survive another scandal,” she says quietly. “Maybe it would be better if-”

“I don’t think this administration can survive without you.” 

You don’t pause for thought before speaking those words, and they ring clear with conviction, something that makes her smile, not the sparkling smile that she’s capable of, but something that’s a lot closer to it than you thought you’d see a few minutes ago. Along with the smile, her free hand reaches out, touches your cheek gently. “You’re something else Charlie,” she tells you.

The words sound familiar, and it takes you a second to place them. Then you do; remembering a bench in the Sculpture Garden on one of the worst nights of your life. You remember her presence, her smile, her lips on yours, and maybe she does too, because you’re not sure who leans forward first, but then your lips are on hers again, and it’s just like you remember. 

Except that it’s not, because you remember it as being frantic, hurried, and this is nothing of the sort. This is slow and languid, no less passionate, far more tender. Hips moving almost lazily against yours, clothes seeming to melt away of their own accord as you make out on the couch like teenagers. You almost don’t realise how far things have gone until it’s too late to stop them, until you’re sheathed inside her, her arching up against you, whispering your name. It’s too late to stop then, even if you wanted to, which you definitely don’t, and you don’t stop, keeping up the same slow rhythm she’s set until the world dissolves around you both. 

When it coalesces again, you take her by the hand, lead her to your bed where you both grab a couple of hours sleep. 

She doesn’t wake you when she leaves, but you wake anyway, watch her leave.

She doesn’t tell you that this is the last time that this will happen. 

She doesn’t have to. 

*

You almost expect things to be difficult between you, even more strained than they were previously. But they’re not. Your first indication of that comes when Muppets are visiting the White House, and you tease her about what she and Big Bird have in common. She comes back with a number of answers of her own, which you were expecting, because the joke’s not exactly new, but it’s the look in her eyes when she does it that sends your spirits soaring. There’s a sparkle in her eye, a spring in her step that hasn’t been there in too long, and you enjoy seeing it. Carol has it that it’s courtesy of Ben, the new-old man in CJ’s life, and you’re perfectly willing to accept that. Still, you’d like to think that you had a little something to do with it. 

You see Ben in the halls, someone points out who he is to you, and you wonder does he know how lucky he is to have someone like CJ in his life. You also wonder how any man in his right mind would let her go in the first place, because you never would. 

Then you realise you have; followed up shortly by the decision that it’s not the same thing.

Because whatever else you might have been to one another for a couple of nights here and there, first and foremost, you’re friends. 

And you’re ok with that. 

And if it should happen that at some point you’re more than friends for a night? 

You’re ok with that too.


End file.
